Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I went down to Scott's quarters to look over her shoulder at the pastel drawing.
'Is it okay?' she asked.
'The megaphone's good,' I said. They had presumably brought this object so they could con-
verse from the ship to the sea ice. It had ended up hanging on a hook above Scott's desk. I had
tried to think of a use for it at Wooville, but alas! I was too attached to my VHF.
'There's something wrong with the way this light falls here,' I said, pointing to a corner of
the painting. We had grown accustomed to being frank about the other's work - false politeness
seemed absurdly out of place at Wooville. It would have been like wearing couturier parkas.
'How about a touch of Naples yellow there?' I said, pointing again. She looked at the sketch,
and then at me, wide-eyed.
'I've taught you too much,' she said.
∗
Before I could go home, there was one thing I still had to do.
In the hut, a single shaft of light from the midnight sun cut above the mound of snow piled
against the window and shone on to the long wooden table, casting distorted shadows against the
far wall. It was the table loaded with bottles that Ponting photographed while roistering English
voices rang around the hut. Lucia was sleeping peacefully in our own quiet hut, a hundred yards
away. The wind reverberated in the small entrance hall like the sound of a train in a tunnel, though
the body of the hut was almost silent.
I lay awake for many hours, my head on his pillow, as he, weighed down by his heavy respons-
ibilities, must often have done. How very different the end had been for him. 'Here, then, tonight,'
he had written in his diary, 'we have reached the end of our tether.'
The distended shadows shifted along the old wooden walls as the sun wheeled across the sky.
I was thinking about my first day in Antarctica and the view from the top of the snowhill as the
vulcanologist tap-tapped snow into his specimen tin. I could remember it as if it were yesterday.
A great deal had happened since then. I had travelled thousands of miles, lost a lot of body heat,
watched hundreds of beards ice up, realised how little I had seen, or knew. It was more of a
terra
incognita
than ever. Byrd used the image of a beach and a tide to convey the changing of the sea-
sons in Antarctica: the polar day was the beach, and the night was the tide. I had seen it come in,
and I had seen it go out. It had all happened so fast. But I still felt the same about Antarctica. It was
the great thrill of my life - on top of the snowhill, on Scott's bunk, in what was about to become
my future. It had allowed me to believe in paradise, and that, surely, is a gift without price.
Then I laid my head on his pillow, and went to sleep.
